GSA to monitor response to award management system

Dan Tangherlini wants metrics for success on repairing the System for Award Management.

Dan Tangherlini, acting administrator of the General Services Administration, said Oct. 25 he will be watching in the coming months to see how other agencies react to his agency’s attempts to right a faulty acquisition management system. Those reactions will be his metric for success.

“The way I’m going to look at it is to see how our customers feel about it, and see how many complaints we’re getting from them and how easy it is to get their issues resolved,” Tangherlini said after a closed discussion session at the Coalition for Government Procurement’s Fall Conference.

Tangherlini recently moved responsibility for the System for Award Management (SAM) from GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy to Mary Davie, acting Federal Acquisition Service commissioner, and Casey Coleman, GSA’s CIO.

Tangherlini said Davie and Coleman’s first assignment in fixing SAM: set up metrics for success.

SAM is designed to integrate three acquisition data systems that store and make available information about contractors. The systems include the Central Contractor Registration, the Online Representations and Certifications Application, and the Excluded Parties List System. SAM is a part of the Integrated Acquisition Environment.

SAM went online in July and was taken off-line days later due to performance problems. GSA and IBM, the prime contractor in the project, have been working to fix the problems.

About the Authors

Matthew Weigelt is a freelance journalist who writes about acquisition and procurement.

The Census Bureau hasn't established a time frame for its cloud computing plans, including testing for scalability, security, and privacy protection, as well as determining a budget for cloud services.

Reader comments

Wed, Oct 31, 2012
OccupyIT

"Tangherlini said Davie and Coleman’s first assignment in fixing SAM: set up metrics for success." I get he's new on the job but how many times do we have to listen to an agency purporting to be experts in IT acquisition hand us lessons learned about their screwed up acquisitions? Seriously, did they really start a massive IT project to replace the USG's acquisition systems without indicators of success or performance metrics. Sigh...

Mon, Oct 29, 2012
SBA PCR

Success needs to measured beyond the satisfaction of other Federal agencies. Many small businesses are experiencing struggles try to use the system which can impact their ability to get contract awards. Small business opinions should be of paramount importance.

Mon, Oct 29, 2012

The bounus for us would be to get rid of GSA, and our cost would deminish tremendously by over 50%. Why do we get charged double or triple by our own Goverment agencies, that is ridiculous. Get rid of this old building with asbestos still lingering in our basements and behind walls and we would not be sick so often. The reality is why do we need GSA, that is the big question.

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